Hard drive will not boot after restoring Drive Image file

Hi all
My PC has 2 Maxtor hardrives. A 40gb and an 80gb. The 40gb was in 2 partitions, 30gb and 10gb with Windows XP Pro on the 30gb partition. I decided to Merge the two partitions with Partition Magic.

That process went OK and I got a message saying it was 'successful'. The problem is that the disk would not boot, stopping after the search for a bootable floppy drive etc.

Prior to merging the partitions, I had made a backup using Drive Image which was stored on the 80gb drive. "OK" thinks I, "I'll just restore that image". That I did but after another 'successful' process the drive would still not boot. I have checked the drive with every scandisk type program I have and all report the drive as OK.

The only way I can get the drive to boot is to install XP Pro on it again. I have also Restored the backup Drive Image file and then installed XP pro over the top of that. The drive boots OK and my apps are there but will not run of course. Also, none of my emails, settings etc. are available.

I have reformatted the drive to make sure it is clean but all to no avail.

I need to get the restored hard drive to boot without reinstalling XP Pro but how? I have spoken to Power Quest and they could offer no solution so I am hoping you guys can help me out. :cry:
Thanks in advance
John

Most likely the cause is that the Boot.ini file used by NT/W2k/XP no longer points to the correct partition where XP exists. It is correctable by booting to the CD, selecting repair, and repairing the boot info.

The second likely alternative is that there is no longer an active partition on the drive anymore. The easiest way to correct that is booting to an MS-dos floppy with Fdisk on it and using that to make the partition active.

Hi Mark
Thanks for that. Since my post I have found a possible solution on the MS website which does suggest that the boot.ini file can be repaired with bootcfg /rebuild. I'll let you know how I get on. Many thanks again.
John

This is what has happened since my last post. I reformatted the drive again and Restored the Drive Image file. The PC would not boot, stopping at a black screen with the message saying there is a problem with the hard drive configuration. As before.

I then booted from the XP CD and selected R at the appropriate screen, then eventually typed bootcfg /rebuild. That went OK, rebooted and got as far as the second XP screen (where you get a pale blue screen) and then the boot sequence stopped. I could see the hard drive light blinking at regular intervals of about 1 second.

I later ran scan disk on this boot drive and the surface scan found 2 bad clusters. As the surface scan was going to take about 5 hours I stopped it. The bad clusters seemed to be at the start of the hard drive so I partioned the 40GB as 30GB and 10GBit in the hope that the bad clusters would be in the 10GB partition. (Perhaps it does not work like that)

A quick surface scan showed no bad clusters in the early part of the 30GB partition so perhaps I was successful. So then I Restored the DI file to the 30GB partition with the same results as before.

Now I am stumped so I hope you guys can sort me out.
Many thanks in advance
John

Try running the "set back to factory settings" program you can download from Maxtor on the drive with the problem. Sometimes the sector with partition info gets really messed up. This program will write zeros to the entire disk. You can let it run for about 5 minutes then abort it, because by then the MBR, MFT, etc would have been overwritten. Then try restoring the images again. Just for grins, verify the jumper setting on both your drives and make sure they're set right.

Thank you for your responses. sram, I cannot put the Drive Image onto a disk it is already on.

The saga continues.

I got to the point where Windows XP was booting as far as the first pale blue screen.; i.e it passed the black Windows booting screen. Then the boot stops with the drive light just blinking.

So, I booted from the XP CD and ran the Recovery Console. Chkdsk /p /r reported some errors which it fixed. Or so it said. I ran Fixmbr which reported a non-standard MBR.

The darned thing would still not go past the pale blue Windows XP screen. So I decided to re-install XP again over my restored system. That went OK and the PC booted OK. The only thing is this.

The C: drive contains my newly installed XP Pro, D: drive is my second HD (80GB), E: and F: are CD drives and G: contains my restored Drive Image file. The PC is NOT booting from G:. How the heck did that happen? At least I can get at my saved data, emails etc.

C: and G: are partitions on the same Primary Master drive (40gb) What would happen if were to merge the two partitions with Partition Magic? Or is there a way to make the G: drive bootable? But then the PC may not boot again!

I'm sure this has something to do with the MBR but that's only gut thinking.

Chew
The error message I got originally was :-
Wiondows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuartion problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Etc. etc.

The suggested solution to this is to boot to the Recovery Console and type bootcfg /rebuild. It does not cure the fault.
Thanks
John

It sounds like your boot partition used to be something other than the first on a physical disk, and that has changed in your new configuration.

First thing I'd do is as blakerwry has suggested - make sure you have backed up your data to somewhere you won't lose it. If you still want to try and get things working with your image, do the following.

- Download a bootable disk that lets you read NTFS, such as can be found here. - Restore the image to your chosen hard disk - Boot from the floppy, and find the BOOT.INI file on the hard disk

Chew
Thanks for your response. Perhaps I have not clarified the problem sufficiently. I had made a backup of my original complete XP Pro C: partition using Drive Image. That file is now stored on my second hard drive so I can access it easily with the DOS version of Drive Image. It is that that I have been using to Restore the image file to my C: partition.

Anyway. I will do what you suggest but that will be a few hours from now as the PC is at home and I am at work ssshhhh!

If only I could get the Restored image onto the C: partition to boot there would be no problem. If there were some way around that hurdle I could carry on from there.
Cheers
John

So, the 80 GB drive is only one partition? I just asked that question to make sure your image is working fine. I was ganna say, restore the image to one of your partitions in the 2nd drive and make that partition active.

Restoring an image file should always stupid problems, but I think you didn't image your boot record and MBR. I know there is an option for this in Ghost(somebody might need to confirm this), not sure about DI.

Just do like blakerwry said:

If you ahve access to your files now, back em up and get the heck out of dodge. Format and reinstall XP clean with whatever partition setup you want.

John: Humour me by trying this...restore your image. Restart but boot into Dos with a boot disk also containing Fdisk. At the command prompt type "Fdisk /MBR". Then restart and try to boot off the drive into windows.

Using the DOS version of Partition Magic, I reformatted the 2 partitions on my Primary Master drive (C: and G:). Then merged the two together. That did not take long as there was no data to merge.

Then, using the DOS version of Drive Image, I restored the DI image from my 2nd drive to the Master. That was reported as 'successful'. Try to boot and got the message as before "Windows could not start because of a compter disk hardware configuration problem etc. etc"

So I booted from the XP CD and using Recovery Console at the prompt typed 'bootcfg /rebuilt'. Then fixboot followed by fixmbr. Then I rebooted.

The PC booted past the first black Windows XP screen and then to the first pale blue screen and stopped. So I reasoned that the registry could be faulty. I then used these instructions http://support.micro...om/?kbid=307545 8)

Low and behold the darned thing booted up. I have yet to test it properly as I had to go out but it looks promising. I assume the mbr, boot sector and registry were faulty in the Drive Image file so what should I do now, if anything?

I should not have been so hasty. The next attempt at booting failed and I was back to square one.

So I scrounged another harddrive and restored the DI image to that. Success at the first boot but the second boot told me there was a corrupt or missing hal.dll file. I replaced that from the XP CD but still no joy.

Eventually, bootcfg /rebuild in Recovery Console did the trick as the boot.ini file was incorrect, so I'm running again. I just need to buy a new hard drive.